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Should You Change Your Profile Picture to Protect Your Privacy?

The internet is no longer text-based, and with more pictures, videos, and graphics online, technology has also gotten smarter and able to translate these images into something more tangible. Before all this technology started booming, search engines were not able to “read” an image on a website. So web developers would give the image an alt tag and name it so they could know what it was about.

But those days are about to come to an end. With facial recognition technology just warming up to the consumer world, images are no longer unreadable.

Computers read your face like a QR code and find other images of you that exist online. And as we well know, with the social media craze in its prime, there are many images of ourselves out there that we probably don’t even know exist. Someone at a party or friend’s house may take your picture without your knowledge and within 2 hours it is posted on Facebook or Flickr.

With facial recognition technology any picture that looks like you can easily be found in a matter of moments, even the ones you wish didn’t exist. Hiding behind a fake name or pseudonym will be a thing of the past as all of your aliases will be easily found by your potential employer or mate.

A recent study showed that 90% of people use their real names on their Facebook profiles. And with most people using a picture of their faces for their profile pics, it makes it simple and easy to find out who someone really is. Say you just met someone and you want to know more about them. You can instantly take their picture and search for it online and find all of those matches, and see some of their info on their Facebook page as well. After all, we all have Facebook profiles don’t we?

Managing Your Brand and Privacy Online

Some people are now advocating that we change our Facebook profile pictures so we are not at risk of privacy concerns. For while it is convenient to be able to find out if someone has a double life online, it is also scary when you consider that perfect strangers can find all of your once private information online just by having a picture of your face.

I am not saying you should go out and change your profile picture to protect your identity. But this new technology does raise a few concerns about how private our lives really are. The internet has made the private things public, and while this has shamed a lot of politicians lately, it can also expose a major security threat to your identity. And with it being easier than ever to retrieve someone’s personal information using the internet, it’s also more important than ever to have a plan for protecting your identity.

This is a HUGE issue and I’m surprised there aren’t more comments. What should marketers do? We have to consider competitors and personal safety. Would you advise creating a character or persona and using pen names? If so, how would you go about that?

I’m one of those people who doesn’t want ANYONE knowing my business. Even the IRS mines social media.

As coincidence would have it – after writing my post I received a WARNING email from Consumer Reports. Here’s a couple sentences that capture the gist of it:

“There’s a whole new breed of data company collecting personal information about you and issuing reports.

These companies put basic information about you together with information from social networks, blogs, photo sharing sites and more — then sell that profile to anyone willing to pull out a credit card and pay for it.”

This is a HUGE issue and I’m surprised there aren’t more comments. What should marketers do? We have to consider competitors and personal safety. Would you advise creating a character or persona and using pen names? If so, how would you go about that?

I’m one of those people who doesn’t want ANYONE knowing my business. Even the IRS mines social media.

I totally agree with you Ann. It is a matter of concern to protect our privacy on social sites. With their growth and popularity, it increases the crimes. We don’t know whether it’s a hacker or a scammer

This blog is really informative. I gained more knowledge by reading your post. Thanks for providing us the useful information with us. Your blog is really helpful for me in attaining my knowledge in a right way.

I’m completely agree, Ann. It is very essential to protect your privateness on social media web sites specifically currently with their increase and reputation, and with the crimes associated with them.